Life Cycle Design (lcd) and Design For the Environment (DfE)
The design of products shapes the environmental performance of the goods and services that are produced to satisfy our individual and societal needs. Environmental concerns need to be more effectively addressed in the design process to reduce the environmental impacts associated with a product over its life cycle. Life Cycle Design, Design for Environment, and other similar initiatives based on the product life cycle are being developed to systematically incorporate these environmental concerns into the design process.
Life Cycle Design (LCD) is a systems-oriented approach for designing more ecologically and economically sustainable product systems. Coupling the product development cycle used in business with a product’s physical life cycle, LCD integrates environmental requirements into each design stage so total impacts caused by the product system can be reduced.
Design for Environment (DfE) is another design strategy that can be used to design products with reduced environmental burden. DfE and LCD can be difficult to distinguish. They have similar goals but evolved from different sources. DfE evolved from the “Design for X” approach, where X can represent manufacturability, testability, reliability, or other “downstream” design considerations. Braden Allenby has developed a DfE framework to address the entire product life cycle. Like LCD, DfE uses a series of matrices in an attempt to develop and then incorporate environmental requirements into the design process. DfE is based on the product life cycle framework and focuses on integrating environmental issues into products and process design.
Life cycle design seeks to minimize the environmental consequences of each product system component: product, process, distribution and management. When sustainable development is the goal, the design process can be affected by both internal and external factors.
Internal factors include corporate policies and the companies’ mission, product performance measures, and product strategies as well as the resources available to the company during the design process. For instance, a company’s corporate environmental management system, if it exists at all, greatly affects the designer’s ability to utilize LCD principles.
External factors such as government policies and regulations, consumer demands and preferences, the state of the economy, and competition also affect the design process, as do current scientific understanding and public perception of risks associated with the product.
The needs analysis
As shown in the figure, a typical design project begins with a needs analysis. During this phase, the purpose and scope of the project is defined, and customer needs and market demand are clearly identified. The system boundaries (the scope of the project) can cover the full life cycle system, a partial system, or individual stages of the life cycle. Understandably, the more comprehensive the system of study, the greater the number of opportunities identified for reducing environmental impact. Finally, benchmarking of competitors can identify opportunities to improve environmental performance. This involves comparing a company’s products and activities with another company who is considered to be a leader in the field or “best in class.”